When the oncoming passenger-train was within three or four hundred yards
of the spur track switch and racing toward it at full speed, a man, who
seemed to the onlookers to rise up out of the ground in the train's
path, ran down the track to meet the uprushing headlight, waving his
arms frantically in the stop signal. For an instant that seemed an age,
the passenger engineer made no sign. Then came a short, sharp
whistle-scream, a spewing of sparks from rail-head and tire at the clip
of the emergency brakes, a crash as of the ripping asunder of the
mechanical soul and body, and a wrecked train lay tilted at an angle of
forty-five degrees against the bank of the hill-side cutting.
It was a moment for action rather than for words, and when he cleared
the platform hand-rail and dropped, running, Lidgerwood was only the
fraction of a second ahead of Van Lew and Jefferis. With Bradford
swinging his lantern for Williams and his fireman to come on, the four
men were at the wreck before the cries of fright and agony had broken
out upon the awful stillness following the crash.
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